In recent times, the incorporation of location and navigation technology, such as global positioning systems (GPS) into mobile phones and similar wireless portable devices has created a class of “location-aware” devices that allow for determining location thereof. Such global positioning systems (GPS) facilitate the location of the wireless portable devices to be pinpointed. In other words, users of the wireless portable devices can often be located to an acceptable degree of accuracy.
Conventionally, such determination of the location of the wireless portable devices provides commercial enterprises (for example, such as cloth merchants, tour operators, cab operators and the like) with opportunities to offer location-specific information (for example, such as advertisements of products and/or services) directly to users of the wireless portable devices. For instance, the commercial enterprises may receive a location of a wireless portable device. Based on the received location of the wireless portable device, the commercial enterprises can identify and communicate an appropriate location-specific product and/or service advertisement to a user of such a wireless portable device. Thus, the commercial enterprises could target their advertisements according to the location of the users, in order to make advertising more relevant and valuable. In one example, when the user is determined to be in vicinity of a particular commercial enterprise (for example, such as a cloth merchant), a message (for example, in audio or video format) advertising clothing products offered by that cloth merchant, may be sent to the wireless portable device of the user.
However, providing information to the users of the wireless portable devices using such techniques has certain limitations. For example, the wireless portable devices continuously transmit their locations at predetermined intervals to a central processing device (for example, such as a server). Such continuous transmission of the locations of the wireless portable devices results in high battery consumption thereof since frequent GPS calls between the wireless portable devices and the central processing device are required to calculate the aforesaid locations. Furthermore, such frequent GPS calls require a constant network connection to be maintained between the wireless portable devices and the central processing device. Moreover, maintaining such a constant network connection leads to higher network usage and privacy concerns for the users of the wireless portable devices.